


Earnestly

by unwindmyself



Series: curious shapes shift in the dark [67]
Category: True Blood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cleaning, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Gen, Plans, Vampire Family, agency and choices!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The family investigates the not-quite-ruins of Fangtasia and starts to plan for the immediate future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earnestly

**Author's Note:**

> Part five, "Numb."

When they turn into the Fangtasia parking lot, Pam grabs Tara’s hand.

“Nervous?” Tara asks softly.

Pam scoffs, but she doesn’t say anything because she knows it would come out sounding a lie.  Despite all of the shade she throws on Shreveport and the patrons who kept their club in business, the fact remains that it’s _hers_ (well, and Eric’s, but mostly hers) and she’s prouder of it than she’ll admit.

Which is why when she sees it still standing, she can’t help but smile, just slightly. 

“I thought it was gonna be burned to the ground,” she murmurs.

There’s more graffiti adorning the exterior walls, some of it vitriolic (the usual anti-supe nonsense) and some of it downright basic (at least one pair of heart-enclosed initials), and the neon signs have been crudely removed, and the boards over the door look like they’ve been fucked with at least once, but it’s at least whole.

“Is it a good thing that it’s not?” Willa asks.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Pam points out.  “I doubt that with everything how it is right now the insurance company’d pay up so we could reopen in a swankier location, so we might as well work with what we have.”

“How practical of you,” Tara says.

Eric stops the car abruptly (it’s straddling at least three parking spaces) and turns to face the others.  “Shall we venture on?” he asks, his tone so formal it’s probably sarcastic.

“May as well,” Pam shrugs, clutching at Tara’s hand right up until the moment she has to pull out the key (she’s the only one who still has one) to get through the door. 

Inside is a similar relief/letdown; most of the tables and chairs that weren’t bolted down have been jacked, lots of the decorations have been defaced or stolen as well, and the actual specific bar area is littered with broken glass – Willa steps on a shard that’s long and sharp enough to pierce her foot through the sole of her boot, which causes her to shriek with pain and annoyance before moving to one of the untampered-with booths to take care of it – but the important things remain, namely Eric’s throne, which he immediately goes to sit in.

“Get off your ass,” Tara calls.  “We got work to do.”

“In a minute,” Eric snaps, waving a hand.  “I’m assessing damage.”

Tara rolls her eyes, carefully stepping behind the bar and pulling out a broom and a dustpan.  It’s old-fashioned, but it’ll get the job done.  That’s what this is, a job to get done.

“Let me?” Jessica offers, suddenly beside Tara with a hopeful smile.

Nodding, Tara hands the dustpan over.  “First things first,” she says.  “Or rather, most hazardous messes first.”

Nora smiles faintly as she walks past, breaking the locked office door down and ducking inside.  “Computer’s gone,” she calls.

Pam and Eric shrug at each other.  “That old thing was still runnin’ Vista,” Pam replies from the spot she’s taken up (standing behind Eric, equally “assessing”).  “All the important shit was on our laptops.”

Her foot now healed up, Willa springs to help the other babies clean up the bar; Tara tosses her another broom and she twirls it like a color guard rifle for a moment, rather blithely, before she begins to sweep.  “We oughta make a shopping list when we’re done with this,” she suggests.

“For what?” Jessica asks.

“For re-opening!” Willa exclaims.

“Slow your roll, li’l sis,” Pam calls.  “That’s a ways off.”

Willa rolls her eyes.  “So that’s why we start reordering stuff now,” she says.  “So it’s all here by the time we wanna start lettin’ people back in.”

“I like that she’s sayin’ _we_ ,” Pam says to Eric, amused.

“Your team spirit is inspirational, _dotter_ ,” Eric commends, leaning forward to “assess” the babies’ progress. 

“Ohmygod,” Willa shouts, eyes going wide as she apparently misses his drollness entirely.  “We oughta have a party!”

Everyone else in the room looks at her like she’s crazy.  Nora even appears from the back room to look at her like she’s crazy.

“I’m serious,” she insists.  “Not a re-opening thing, but like, I dunno, don’t y’all feel like we’ve got stuff to celebrate?  Like the world not ending and whatever?”

Tara laughs, not unkindly.  “Pretty low standard,” she observes.

“Well, I mean…”  Willa sighs, waving a hand around the room like she’s trying to catch a rational answer.  “It just seems like the right thing to do, y’know?  We’ve got reasons to be grateful.”

Nora wrinkles her nose, shaking out the plastic trash bag she brought with her from the office.  “It’s actually not a horrible idea,” she admits.

“Thank you!” Willa says.  “We could, like, charge for admission and use the proceeds toward gettin’ things set up again –”

“Some of the proceeds, perhaps,” Nora interrupts with an expression like she’s thinking something much more serious over.

“What would you wanna do with the rest?” Jessica asks, emptying her dustpan into the trash bag.

“Well, we don’t really need that money,” Nora points out.  “Between whatever we’ve amassed ourselves over time – Eric and Pam and I, I mean – and what’s still in the Authority’s accounts, all of which fell to me, to say nothing of what _you_ will have inherited from your Maker…”

Jessica’s eyes go wide, because she honestly hadn’t considered that possibility until now.

“Point is, we aren’t hardly lacking,” Nora summarizes.  “And I would even consider putting some of that toward this goal.”

“And what goal is that, Nora?” Eric asks in one of his commercial-announcer voices.

“I haven’t got the details all sorted out, obviously,” she says, “but – plainly put, charity.  Specifically for those who’ve been affected by these recent… uprisings.”

The others glance at each other (unsurprisingly the babies seem much more receptive to the notion). “Charity,” Pam repeats. “Do you know the first thing about starting or running charities?”

“I know a little, about running ‘em at least,” Willa pipes up.

“Of course you do,” Pam groans.

“The technical details can be sorted out later, and I don’t think it should be entirely run by us, but that’s not the point,” Nora says. “What I’m saying now is that we could charge admission to this party and put it toward the charity. We would get awareness out that way.”

“See!” Willa exclaims.

As the babies finish cleaning up, the grown-ups fall to more serious logistical planning, Pam pacing the room while Nora plants herself in Eric’s lap; once they’ve got the broken glass safely cleared away, they sit around the table that Willa bled on.

“So we can have the party here, obviously,” Willa muses, all chipperness and cheer. “We can get a DJ, maybe, charge for cover and then for drinks too.”

“So it’s like any other night here,” Tara points out.

“We could have a theme,” Jessica suggests shyly, looking and seeming interested for the first time in the entire discussion. “If it was a theme party, that’d be different.”

“Ohmygod, we have to have a theme.”


End file.
